Podcasts about Luv U

How does someone who is living, like it or not, in the last third of life, address everybody else who is living in the second third? It's an important question, cuz most of the time it's like two ships passing in the night. An older Episcopal priest used to come up to me about once a week -- he was assisting in a busy parish where I was rector -- and say, "Hey, Paul, relax. You're working too hard. Please, relax." Every time he did that -- and his "intentions were good" (The Animals, 1965) -- I'd get a-fib! Literally, my heart would jump and I'd get a-fib. What this nice man said was kindly intended, but it always had the opposite effect....: a-fib. So hey, how can Hewes Hull, my conversation partner this week, and yours truly say what our experience and our faith has taught us -- mostly through impasse and insuperabilities -- in such a way that it can get through to a normal, busy (i.e., stressed) listener? That is the Question. I think the podcast probably works. And mainly because of a story Hewes tells, from his own life, near the end. Oh, and there's the music, too, and especially the last, eternal track. So, hey, you out there,... Relax. LUV U, PZ

While one was within the second third of one's life, one had all these goals in view, of happy marriage, happy fathering, and (most of all, sadly) successful careering. That was the way it was -- and probably the way it is, at least for some who may be reading this. And in that (now) embarrassing order, too. But at this point it's beginning to look a little bankrupt -- at least the order of valuation. Maybe "superficial" is a better word. So "What Now, My Love?" (H. Alpert/M. Ryder/Sonny & Cher... ad infinitum). Is the last third of life, i.e., for those of us among the "new demographic", disillusionment and moping; or compulsed repetition; or possibly/impossibly "Behold, I do a New Thing" (Isaiah 43:19)? Today, and again next week, my friend Hewes Hull and I will be discussing this (to us, core) theme: What Now, My Love? Is it Marcus-Aurelian grinning-and-bearing it? Or maybe assisted suicide, even? Or again, "Something Better Beginning" (The Kinks, 1965)? Hewes has had a fine career practising law and then in private equity finance. He has an extraordinary wife, Trent, of 31 years. Hewes himself is 57 years of age. (A young man, as I now pronounce him.) His chief hobbies are theology, jujitsu and hunting/fishing. Hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Oh, and I hope you'll LUV the closing track, by... wait for it... Bobby Sherman! LUV U.

Every version or tradition of the Christian Faith offers an objective or corporealized dimension within a person's (longed for) relationship with God. For Roman Catholicism, it is the Real Presence of the Lord within the Elements of Bread and Wine. For pentecostalism, it is the embodied Gifts of the Spirit in miracles of healing and divine intervention, and often an accompanying gift of speaking in tongues. For many Protestants, it is the Written Word of the Bible -- the actual and specific words as dictated by God Himself. Personally, I like all of these 'doors' to experiencing God. During Covid I almost switched to Catholicism because only the Catholic parish where we lived at the time kept its doors open. So I could go there every day and pray. Earlier I had sort of already become a pentecostal Christian, partly because of a vision I received during a sermon preached by a pentecostal pastor. And I have always loved -- treasured! -- the Old and New Testaments as the continuing Word of God to one's hungry heart. Then, too, I have on three occasions seen dead people. Three times I have interacted with people I had known who were now dead. Each time I was being addressed by individuals who were speaking to me from God's Heaven. So Pixie Dust. Like in the Disney Peter Pan, animated - classic - perfect: Pixie Dust. We need Pixie Dust. As Ringo sang in "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band": 'I Get By with a Little Help from my (Pixie Dust)'. It's not an optional extra. It's essential. LUV U.

It's been too long but here is my new episode. It started with the second-to-last scene in an 'Outer Limits' episode from 1963 entitled "The Human Factor". Brought yours truly straight to tears. Then we hurtled through time to 1996, to Cliff Robertson's touching redemption at the end of another 'Outer Limits' episode, entitled "Joyride". The combination of these two genius moments equipped PZ to talk about... yes... Anglicanism... and yes... the Episcopal Church... and yes... contemporary parish ministry. But I couldn't go there until my heart was ready. And that work was achieved by Sally Kellerman and Gary Merrill in 1963. Incidentally, I recommend you begin your sermon preparation -- maybe any public preparation -- by getting in touch with your heart. (People aren't really that interested in your mind.) Get in touch with your heart and you might actually convince somebody. Oh, and by the way, I'm an Episcopal minister and still glad to be one. (And we go to a great church.) LUV U.

Everyday I see how little I know. Everyday I see how little I've read, or seen, or heard. (Thought I had, but hadn't.) A prime example of this is Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Have you ever heard of Agnes Sligh Turnbull? (You probably have.) She wrote very successful novels in the 1940s and '50s, and later, too. But she was an optimist, she was a Christian, and she believed in redemption. (So she's more or less been "cancelled" by critical opinion, even tho' she sold millions of novels in her day.) Now you've got to read Agnes Sligh Turnbull's 1947 novel entitled The Bishop's Mantle. It's the inside story of a young Episcopal rector in a northeastern city -- "inside story", in that the author gets inside the heart and mind of a sincere man of God who is still completely human and vulnerable. Almost every page of The Bishop's Mantle has a moment of total insight into what it is like to be parish priest. The man happens also to be in love with a high flying young woman who is reluctant to marry a "parson". That problem needs to be worked out. Oh, and one more thing: The Bishop's Mantle describes a denomination that was, prior to 1979, about 90% "low church". The church observed by Agnes Sligh Turnbull is just so refreshingly not high church. (I think you'll love that aspect.) Oh, and it's 'Sligh' not 'Sly' -- tho' we sure loved Sly back in the day. LUV U.

There's a new king of LB Mountain and his name is Frankie Luvu! What other developments came out of Week 12 in the NFL? Josh and Adam dig through all the news, including young edge rushers getting more opportunity, the DPOY debate, and some Panthers IDPs showing signs of life. At the end, the duo also tackles some dynasty stashes for 2025, pending free agents, and potential cut casualties. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Shout out to Kentucky's own Sugadaisy for the intro and outro music. The song sampled in this episode is "Girlfriend." You can check out more of Sugadaisy's music here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our other shows, The IDP After Show, The IDP Trade Show, IDP Drafts, and IDP Bets. If you'd like to support the show, you can do so for just $5/month over at ⁠theIDPshow.com⁠. We've got some premium features for paid supporters that we know you'll enjoy. Follow us on Twitter ⁠@theidpshow⁠. Thanks for listening!

There is a roughly four-minute sequence in the middle of the first Superman movie (1978) that hits the stratosphere of movie emotion -- and of real-life emotion, too. It is the scene in which Superman takes Lois Lane's hand and flies her leisuredly over Manhattan Island. As the pair glide over the city, Lois Lane (played by Margot Kidder) confides her innermost thoughts to the viewer: she has fallen completely in love with Superman, and that is because he has singled her out as the object of his most personal regard. The sequence is monumental in feeling and memory because it sums up the sequence of romantic loving -- and also the sequence of God's loving of poor us. Because Superman has singled out Lois for his most tender regard, she responds with her entire self. She voices her feelings in this way: "Here I am like a kid out of school. Holding hands with a god. I'm a fool. Will you look at me? Quivering. Like a little girl shivering. You can see right through me. Can you read my mind? Can you picture the things I'm thinking of? Wondering why you are all the wonderful things you are. You can fly! You belong in the sky. You and I could belong to each other. If you need a friend, I'm the one to fly to. If you need to be loved, here I am. Read my mind." What this demonstrates is that love does not start with loving someone, but rather with being loved by someone. I need to be the object of someone's love before I can actually love someone myself. Now capitalize the 's' - S - and the analogy to the Christian Gospel becomes palpable. Instantly palpable! All love begins as One-Way Love: not love from me but love to me. So go now and look up that sequence in Superman from 1978. It's easy to find. And it's the truth of life. And not a truth of life. But the truth of life. LUV U.

I so want to connect with my hearers when I preach or speak. Yes, one has a Message -- the One-Way Love of God embodied in the Compassionate Christ. But if it doesn't really connect with the listener -- with the sufferer! -- it is not able to do its job. J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), who had basically lost whatever faith he had been exposed to as a child, spent a lot of years looking for... something. He would gladly have capitalized "something" (i.e., Something). In 1960 Priestley wrote specifically about the decline of Christianity in the West. He wrote that the only way the "Church" could 'come back' -- which he would have welcomed given the cultural despair and nihilism he observed everywhere around him -- was to get through to the unconscious. Christianity's original, great and contagious strength had been to reach individuals in their depth/s. I agree with JBP. For many years Mary and I have listened to sermons that are sincere, sound theologically, and well prepared exegetically. Yet we often leave the service untouched, un-addressed, un-healed. As Herr Kaesemann said once, after listening to a sermon during a conference at Yale Divinity School: "Es gibt keine Anrede!" In other words, the Word has to address me in the deeps. The preacher's "deeps" need to be calling out to mine (Psalm 42:7). This cast draws on Priestley's "Presence of the Absence"; a John Wyndham paperback from 1953; and -- wait for it -- Spanky & Our Gang. The last track, from 1969, is IMO pure perfection. Oh, and "Out of the Deeps" is dedicated to Mary Zahl, whose recent talk to the Women of the Advent in Birmingham, entitled "The Things That Remain" (https://talkingbird.fireside.fm/400) is as fine as anything I have ever heard her present. LUV U.

I'm thinking about ecclesiology today. Rarely do. But a combination of J.B. Priestley's "low anthropology", a couple of recent lightning bolts from outside space and (present) time, and a fresh glimpse of the touching statue of "The Compassionate Christ" outside Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham: Well, they got me thinking of what the Christian Church is centrally and anchoredly about. Add to that the third verse of Lou Christie's number-one song from 1966, "Lightnin' Strikes"; and it's probably all there. One's ecclesiology, I mean. "Dangerous Corner" by J.B. Priestley, which was first performed in London in 1932, unmasks the human tragedy of self-serving, manipulation, and deception in about as unrelieved a manner as could be imagined. The last scene but one, which leads directly to a character's suicide, surely rips the curtain off our world's endemic conspiratorial malice. It is almost a pure enactment of the "low anthropology" that is endemic to us. But the playwright offers us no hope. He actually, explicitly dismisses the antidote of faith in God. I so want to enter that scene myself, speaking sincerely and personally, and address the desperate "hero". He's got it mostly right, you see; his diagnosis is accurate. But we believe in God -- and not a "deistic"/hands-off sort of force, but rather: Pure Empathy, Pure Sympathy, Pure Mercy, Pure Grace. Our ecclesiology, therefore, is the Church, in whatever form, as Embodiment of One-Way Love. That's PZ's ecclesiology. That's Lou Christie's "chapel in the pines" (1966). That's the churches of refuge at the end of War of the Worlds (1953), that's 'Mr. Carpenter' in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), that's the Isaiah 2, verse 4 climax of The Colossus of New York (1958), that's the hymn chorale at the end of The Space Children (1958), that's the Christ-figure at the conclusion of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). And so it goes. When the curtain is ripped away on life as it really is and people as they really are, all that's needed is One Helping Hand, One "Next Voice You Hear" (1951), One... Man from Galilee (Ocean, 1971/Elvis, 1972), One Jesus Christ Superstar. LUV U.

Can't believe I got to see Irma Thomas in person a few years back. (Saw The Stones performing the same song in 1965 on their first American tour. Have to pinch myself that that really happened. But it did.) But time is on my mind just now. This is for two reasons: 1) Two old friends died under conditions that felt like almost the polar opposite of what we would have expected when we were all very young together. There was so much promise and so much hopefulness and so much enthusiasm and so much pluck. But then 50+ years later, aloneness and physical distress and self-despair. Terminal, in fact. Who would have thought? Not I. So I'm seeing each of these old friends as they were when they were 20, then comparing their circumstances at death decades later. Time was not on their side. 2) One of my heroes, J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), wrote plays about this. Especially his 1937 masterpiece Time and the Conways. He tried to understand the meaning, the constituent elements, and the implications of time, and us. I think he came very close. (Time and the Conways, incidentally, was filmed, and very well, in 1985. You can see it right now on YouTube.) Oh, and just to show everyone that time really doesn't matter, within eternal perspective that is, I've put at the end of the cast the absolute best cover version ever recorded of Irma Thomas' famous song. You'll see. Or rather, you'll hear. LUV U.

Every day these days I seem to find out something important that I didn't know before. For example, that Burton Cummings has just released a new album. Or that one of Joe Dante's favorite movies is a Spanish religious satire released in 1995. Or... that The Fantasticks is really good! Or that the creators of the latter wrote an uncommonly powerful musical about a Christian martyr. As I say, every day is a rebuke to one's supposed deep bench. This podcast looks at the abreactive power of music and the aspirations of live theater to get through to our real selves. Like a sermon is meant to do! The vehicle is the off-Broadway play entitled Philemon, which first opened in 1975 and ultimately ran for about 55 performances. The lyricist was Tom Jones and the composer was Harvey Schmidt. Here, in Philemon, two mainstream Broadway artists tried to encapsulate the story of a radical Christian conversion in Third Century Antioch, and with just seven performers and maybe two+ instrumentalists. Funny thing is, they succeeded! Sure, it could be cut by 40 minutes (!). Sure, the theology is a little sketchy, tho' entirely well meaning. BUT Philemon manages to capture the abreactive/cathartic form of "instant/automatic psychoanalysis" by which a converted person goes from death to life in concrete terms. Philemon manages to get under the skin of Herr Moltmann's Tod-Auferstehung (i.e., Death-Resurrection) dynamic -- which IMO is the true dynamic of life. (We are in Frank Lake territory, but it's Greenwich Village and it's 1975.) Oh, and the concluding track embodies the failure of the Law to create the response it intends -- Motown-fashion! LUV U.

Podcast episode 142 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on …

Shah Cypha hosts Landon McClellan on Power 107.6, The Truth. Landon talks about his roots in Wilmington, NC, his journey from church music to hip-hop, and the impact gospel and hip-hop legends like Lil Wayne had on him. He reveals his creative process and discusses his latest track, "LUV U 2MORO", produced by J-Stylz. Landon emphasizes the authenticity in his music and integrates live instrumentation into his soulful sound. Tune in to experience an insightful conversation about musical influences, versatility, and the grind behind Landon's artistry.

Best Day Ever is a pop-hits music podcast. Most music is from the mid-2000s. Please check out these great tunes. Great for summertime parties, Note: Many of these songs are 'explicit'. Enjoy. Artist names and song titles are in order of play...BRUNO MARS-THE LAZY SONG, JESSIE J-PRICE TAG, TRAVIE McCOY-BILLIONAIRE, GYM CLASS HEROES-STEREO HEARTS, MAGIC-LAY YOU DOWN, SEAN PAUL-GOT 2 LUV U, MAROOD 5-ONE MORE NIGHT, IGGY AZALEA-FANCY, BLACK EYED PEAS-WHERE IS THE LOVE, THE CHAINSMOKERS-CLOSER, RYAN TEDDER-ROCKETEER, SNOOP DOGG-YOUNG, WILD, AND FREE, JUSTIN BIEBER-BOYFRIEND, DJ SNAKE-LEAN ON, JUSTIN BIEBER-LET ME LOVE YOU and SORRY, MIKE POSNER-I TOOK A PILL, SEAN PAUL-NO LIE, DUA LIPA-ROCKABYE, FLO RIDA-WHISTLE, B.O.B.-NOTHIN' ON YOU. End. Thanks for listening from Ken Steele.

Now "here's a howdy-do" (The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan). How does Joe Meek shed light on that ascendant movement -- and it still is ascendant -- within New Testament scholarship and interpretation? Let me say how. Admirers of Joe Meek's amazing productions like to say that he was way ahead of his time in terms of technology and recording innovation BUT that the songs themselves, almost all of them, in their many hundreds, are sentimental, corny and juvenile. But they're not! They may sound that way, but just listen to the words. They're about "guys and gals", the denizens of Grease and also of To Sir, with Love, and -- wait for it -- everybody. None of Joe's songs -- not a single one, except maybe, at the very end, one, entitled "It's Hard to Believe It" -- are about issues or groups or themes. Every song Joe ever chose to produce is about love: love gone wrong, love gone right, love fulfilled, love disappointed, love obstructed, love enabled. The evidence for this preoccupation is in the lyrics -- and oh, about 99.999 % of them. The same is true in relation to the New Perspective on Paul. The evidence that that movement is founded on an imposed "story" or paradigm, is overwhelming. That is, if you actually read the Letters of St. Paul. Or the Book of Hebrews, from start to finish. Christ came to give us a New Covenant, not a sort-of "expanded" version of the Old. The Old is passed away, behold the New is come. For years and years, I have tried to say this. (One is instantly accused of "supercessionism" if one says it. And that seems to end the argument. But the accusatory term is arbitrary, linguistic, and freighted.) The evidence of the New Testament is in fact overwhelmingly contrary to the evisceration of Grace that has been dynamized by the New Perspective. Joe Meek underlines this. His lyrics confirm it. A little "icky" at times they may be, but relationships that strive for mutual love can also be icky. Joe's songs mirror an odd truth: life is about individual men and women who are trying to find... belovedness, and therefore love in return. Dear New Testament interpreters, read the Letters of St. Paul. Read the Letter to the Hebrews. Read the Gospels -- all of them. And read 'em again in the light of Joe Meek! The subject and meaning is staring you in the face. LUV U.

The new release of hundreds of Joe-Meek tapes and tape-excerpts from the "Tea Chests" of yore is a fresh flashlight into the nature of reality within this broken/fallen world. Did any of us have any idea of how much good material is contained within these acetate tapes that were packed up in the aftermath of Joe's horrible death? Probably not. We either feared that the tapes had deteriorated over many decades of storage OR that the substance of them would disappoint us. Neither fear proved true! The surprise-factor within almost everything Joe Meek recorded is without equal. Everything -- and I mean, everything -- he touched came off strange, oblique, jaw-dropping, unexpected, contradictory, and memorable. His artistic achievement -- maybe like Mozart's -- reveals ceaseless inspiration from outside himself. His work is Sibylline. Now that the tea chests are giving us a chance to hear again, to hear anew, Joe's "New World" (1960), the triumph of "our" world, its flesh, and its devil over God's fire and Truth is seen through anew. All the world's "narrative"-making collapses in the light of Joe's uncommon fire. The Bible is confirmed, the New Testament is revealed, the fecklessness and "Wheel in the Sky" despair of everyday human life that is lived on its own terms -- all of that is lit and revealed anew. And, dear listener, do not forget to listen to the next cast. It is entitled "Self-Portrait". LUV U.

Consideration of these (thousands of) new "Tea Chest" tapes from Joe Meek is such a blow to old assumptions. For example, I thought I knew his music pretty well. Even dedicated a book to him once, despite his having been dead since 1967. So now come out a Ton, a TON of new recordings by the Man Who Heard a New World. And almost all of them are fine. Many are actually spectacular. They have been sitting in cases, possibly deteriorating and entirely un-heard, for 57 years. "Self Portrait", performed by Glenda Collins -- and this cast begins with her solo a cappella rendition of the song -- is beyond profound. It almost says the entire Bare Essentials of what it is to be a human being. I would only root the singer's vision of herself in God. Funny thing is, I think she would have, too. I am certain Joe would have. (He was a believer, and grew up in the Church of England. He is interred at the parish church of his childhood.) We know very little, and whatever we do know -- really -- comes from outside ourselves. We know one thing, which we rarely know we know: we each need love, individual love for each one of us in our individuality. Everything else is "like the chaff which the wind blows away". Joe Meek, the Tea Chests, and his lightning-like inspirations -- they are a part of the "staff of life". LUV U.

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build bridges to the world. What the word hides is institutional attrition. It is a way of putting a brave face on empirical defeat. (It's a little like the adjective "nuanced". Watch out.) I saw so clearly at the recent Mockingbird Conference that the renewal of the Christian Church is not tied to a horizontal strategy or even a quality of enterprise. The renewal of the Church consists in its re-affirmation of the One-Way Love of the Gospel of God. The pain of individual experience is so widespread that all it takes is a word -- a pastoral "position", we might say -- of empathetic attentive love for the person in pain to be helped beyond measure. Because the word of empathy and compassion is the Word of God's Grace. One saw this in almost innumerable one-to-one conversations at the Mockingbird Conference. (Didn't you?) Personally, I could not feel less "nimble" -- tho' you may remember that I was a total jock in PZ's school days! The fact is, helping is not about nimble. It's about One-Way Love and the Divine Compassion for sufferers in all shapes and sizes. That's the ticket. Oh, and even if Noel Coward was a committed agnostic, the scene between disconsolate mother and ghostly son in Scene Two of Coward's play "Post-Mortem" (1930) touches on the Greatest Thing in the World. I don't think he ever wrote a greater paragraph than the speech which the grieving mother makes to her ghostly son. LUV U. (And it's not "complicated".)

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS or Beta?" I believe these everyday reflexive questions are an expression of the World, the Flesh and the Devil's active desire to shut down anything that might resemble or enable a real exchange between persons. In this cast I tell some stories of interchanges at the 'cash point' in which the reflexive words of the cashier suddenly fell apart, and the real person came through. The truth was out! Now here's an either-or statement: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. I used to think that was an overstatement, and should be diluted to something like: Most people at some point in their lives find themselves sitting on an engrossing inward concern that they are reluctant to share with anyone else. But experience has taught me the further truth: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue. You the Listener will need to decide what you think about that. But one thing I do know and for absolute sure: The answer to life is not bound up with the question of whether I need a receipt. LUV U!

You can't help noticing, if you study Soviet-Era Iron-Curtain sci fi illustrations and posters -- an activity which I feel sure governs your every waking minute -- that there are ZERO aliens or extra-terrestrial forms of life to be seen. The Soviets and the East Germans, who did in fact excel in graphics concerning space exploration, never ever bring UFOs or alien inhabitants of other planets into the narrative, either visually or narratively. Yes, maybe Tarkovsky "un tout peit peu" once, but he was exiled pronto from his homeland. There is a connection between the mandatory and aggressive atheism of Communism and the definite exile of any trace of openness to extra-terrestrial life. It's just an observable fact. So while you may enjoy Iron Curtain sci-fi for its pragmatism and occasional heroism, it is also totally un-cool, un-fun and un-hopeful. Where would you and I be without the possibility of answers that come from outside ourselves? As I say in the cast, relevant to a recent movie review of an old (but now Blu-Rayed) "film noir", nihilism, whether New or old, is ultimately suicidal. It is also self-sufficient in principle and therefore a crash-landing in real life -- with no survivors, by the way. So, hey, keep your mind open. Keep your heart open. And moreover, as Holy Week really teaches, God is Good; We Are Not Alone; and everything has a Purpose. LUV U.

Every love story has an origin and this one began on a college campus in Kentucky. Dr. Matisa and Elder Lawrence Wilbon dropped by to share their journey as we unpacked:- Fighting Fair- Loving the person and not just their purpose- Loving through land mines...and so much more. Tap in and join us!Support the showFB @thespeakherpodcast | IG @camille.essick | YT: CamilleEssickOfficial "Where Innovators & Creators Connect".**I do not own the rights to this music.**

Lewis Black joins the Steve Cochran Show to discuss The luv u Project's efforts to tackle mental health issues, the excitement surrounding The Lewis Black Invitational Golf Tournament, and he shares his March Madness bracket picks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't tire of quoting Thomas Cranmer's 'meme' that goes like this: "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." That is so true to life. Now note its difference with the sentence quoted in part one of this cast by my old episcopal acquaintance in Australia: "Nothing can be loved at speed" (M. Leunig). But the heart always loves at speed! Perseverance and steady, thoughtful loving exists, yes, but as a fruit of heart-love: Its fruit -- its consequence -- its effect. And the heart, I say again, always loves at speed. You could almost say this is the secret of life. Cranmer certainly said it. You and I know it from experience. Almost all our core decisions were made "at speed". We didn't think them through before making them. Our heart was "caught", and so it went and "So It Goes" (B. Joel, 1990). When we said 'yes' to God, or when we first said a real prayer, it "Only Took a Minute, Lord'. We didn't "count the cost". We probably should have, but we didn't in fact. By the Grace of God, our hearts were so "warmed" (John Wesley on May the 24th) that the warm lasted. The warm kept heating us as long as life went on. "Listen to the Warm" (Rod McK., 1967). So, um, well, OK, I, ... Listen to your Heart. LUV U.

Personally, I think that one's most cherished tunes come from ... oneself. By which I mean that the music you love may say more about you than about the music itself. You hear a Pretenders single and it calls you instantaneously back to the person you were when you first heard it. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds has the power to instantly recreate the mood you were in when you first saw The Breakfast Club in the theater. Or maybe it brings to mind and heart the person you were with when you saw it! I seriously ask you, Why do you like the music, and especially the rock 'n roll music, that you still like? Why does a particular song have the power to evoke tears -- like in two seconds? Why? Tell me, please -- I'm deeply interested. And why interested? Because I care about you. I care about your heart. I care about the assimilation of both your negativity -- which often has its origin in long ago experience of pain -- and your positivity -- which can boost you up when other things pull you down. How would you begin this podcast? I mean, with what music would you open it? And conclude it? Incidentally, the Spirit of God spoke to me during the recording of it. You'll notice a change which takes place near the end. So I left it in -- the unexpected change -- because, well, it witnesses. LUV U!

Chris Brown - One More Chance Remix (LL Cool J - Luv U Better)

One just can't get over that repeating, concluding forcefulness of Los Straitjackets' music by which they almost always save the best for last -- like in the wedding at Cana, sort of. They light up the sky in the last third -- sometimes even the last fifth -- of their covers and their songs. Like you and me could do! And especially if we could take the heartfelt learnings of the last third of our lives and import them retroactively into our lives' stressful, burdened second third. Now that's what PZ is trying to do for you today. "For you the living/This Mash was meant, too". I am trying to impute what I believe has inspired me in recent times to one's listeners' stressful and demanding adult lives. I can't tell you, as my now deceased colleague in South Carolina used to tell me almost every time he saw me: "Relax, Paul!" He meant well, yes, but it only made me feel always worse when he said it. What I want to say is more like this: "Let me take you there" ('Strawberry Fields', 1967). Let me take you in your now to a place of focus on the Big Things, the Big Heart, the Big Connection/s. I feel sometimes like the character 'Emily' says she feels in the last act of "Our Town". Recently dead, she returns to the scene of her 12th birthday, and longs for her parents and brother -- and herself back then- - to see what's really going on. Not to-ings and fro-ings and "process", but rather real love and real care and real gestures and real connection and real feeling -- real heart! Will you let me be to you today, dear Listener, a surrogate for Emily? "Let me take you there" -- to a life not of obvious burden and exhaustion, but a life of optimism and promise and satisfaction and joy. That's what PZ's Podcast is all about. LUV U.

Heard a sermon last night that cut to the quick. It evoked the image of a "new priesthood" -- a new movement of God in the New Year. The preacher's vision of life and the work of God in the world felt inspired to the first power. And then I thought of Jack Kerouac -- right in the middle of her sermon. I thought of his amazing book, on practical Buddhism no less, entitled Some of the Dharma. Kerouac and the preacher were on the same line. Then something else came to mind: the jaw-dropping last act of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". Each of these three 'productions', i.e., Paula White's sermon, Jack Kerouac's spiritual diary, and TNW's seminal play: they were all saying the same thing. To wit, the Truth of life lies in every case under the surface of the world. What you see, and even what you think you want to see, is not the Lasting Thing. God's work is infinitely higher than our desires and our ratiocination, tho' at times linked with those things. Ultimately, what God is doing is different from what we think is going on. What a relief! What a redemption (of our pasts)! What a Promise of real action! So I'm hopeful for 2024. Hope you can be, too. LUV U. PZ

When I survey... not the Wondrous Cross, but the world as it's currently going, it's hard not to despair. So many things seem and feel wrong -- are wrong. Providentially (as I see it), I've been directed back to Rod Serling. He was so focussed on justice, and especially social justice; and also on fate and impassable destiny. But he also believed in One Big Miracle. Rod Serling believed in the Miracle of Christmas! This comes out in teleplay after teleplay, from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Serling honestly believed that One Miracle could change the fallen world. Go back and watch the 1971 'Night Gallery' episode entitled "The Messiah on Mott Street". It's easy to find online (https://archive.org/details/the-messiah-on-mott-street), and is also free of charge. The episode not only enacts a first-class human miracle, but it is also a high point of Jewish-Christian reconciliation in a network TV show. In short, "The Messiah on Mott Street" is a wonder. It will give you fresh hope. And not just hope in 'meta'-terms. But hope for that particular personal insolubility with which you are currently dealing. Oddly, Rod Serling has given me new hope today as I look out on the world. Oh, and read Ross Douthat's terrific recent column in the New York Times entitled, "Where Does Religion Come From?" (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/opinion/religion-christianity-belief.html). It has a Rod Serling quality to it. And a Simeon Zahl quality, too! LUV U.

God spoke to me recently. Not through a mediated form -- albeit it was through another human being. Not through concept nor reading nor paradox nor metaphor nor memory. But right Here and Now! I was truly blown away. It was neither expected (at all) nor on a subject about which I'd been thinking. This podcast gives the outline of what happened. There were even witnesses. In the midst of an otherwise delightful walk down memory lane with companions whom I cherish, one of these companions suddenly uttered some truths so powerful and demanding of attention that we were all suddenly stopped in our tracks. Stopped in our tracks. I still can't believe it happened. Mary's comment, when I told her the story, was simply: "You were sure plunged into very deep waters there." Now they were Good Waters, True Waters, Healing Waters. Moreover, they weren't "nuanced" or "complicated". It wasn't a case of "Both/And". It was a case of straight-up Either/Or. I was suddenly, indubitably JUSTIFIED. Listen to this cast and ask yourself if it's happened to you. Do you want it to happen to you? Do you care? Do you want me to tell you more? (I'll be glad to, and probably in another cast.) Oh, and the closing music is an excerpt from "Jesus Says", by our favorite Northern Irish Protestant rock band, 'Ash'. I just like the riff. And the title. LUV U.

If you want to get to the core, the very heart, of a person's -- say, your own -- experience of Grace, ask them (i.e., ask yourself) to tell you about an experience of acceptance or belovedness that came to them at a low point in their youth or childhood. Get them to tell you about that one experience of being loved personally, subjectively, for yourself, I mean, that changed... everything. Almost everyone you know can summon up a story, almost always when they were in a place of despair, when someone, usually unexpectedly, reached out and ... held them. Similarly, ask them (i.e., yourself) about an experience of personal rejection, either as a child or an adolescent, that forever troubled the waters of their life's course. Someone rejected them -- personally, I mean, and not because of an "identity" or ideology, but for yourself personally -- and this has haunted them, like Poe's 'Lost Lenore', forever. This podcast observes the power of personal rejection but, more importantly, the power of personal acceptance. Consider the relationship of 'Magwitch' to 'Pip' in "Great Expectations". (See the 1946 masterpiece movie of it!). Or consider the story I tell at the conclusion of the cast, of a two-hour ride being offered to yours truly by someone way back in 1972. And that, to quote Robert Frost, "made all the difference". These are anchor instantiations of God's Grace in your life. They verify what St. Paul describes in Romans 7, and what Christ spent His life, and death, doing. And then there's Michel Legrand... LUV U!

#wwtb? @whtwetalkinbout? August 20th. Show week @FunnyBoneComedyClub in Columbus, Ohio. Your boys are on the big stage. Support the home team. Don't wait until the last minute guys to cop a ticket. We do this for y'all. Link in bio. All of our bios. No excuses. Thank you to everyone that has copped a ticket. Walk up tickets are still available. Do remember, The culture from a Midwest POV. @trav_dave @Dez_arnez @thekidblaze @Ceoreese.

So I was in Henley-on-Thames last week and there was this almost hidden bookshop next to a place called "The Ferret". (I kid you not.) High on a shelf there was an old leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' lesser known Christmas stories. Not the long ones like "A Christmas Carol" or "The Chimes" or "The Haunted Man"; but short ones like "The Child's Story", "The Seven Poor Travellers", and "What Christmas Is As We Grow Older". What these stories all reveal -- for I started reading them on the airplane home -- is an explicit (tho' never didactic nor even artificial) dynamic of Christian Grace and One-Way Love. The author makes it clear in every tale that the core transaction of life in this world is the possibility of new beginning, new birth, resurrected hope, and empathic out-reaching love. Dickens always traces such dynamic beneficence specifically to Christ and His (Christmas) Goodness towards the lonely, the desperate, the poor, and even the rogues. In short, each story in this collection sets out the Whole Loaf. For many years -- many decades, it feels like sometimes -- I was perpetually mining my movies, my novels and my TV shows for implicit Christianity -- implicit Gospel, implicit Grace. And it can be found! But then one day I actually read Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and found the Whole Loaf in that celebrated novel. And then one day I read Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection and again: the Whole Loaf. And now I read Charles Dickens' short Christmas stories and again, Behold: the Whole Loaf. Part of the Loaf can be very good. Say, General Public (1980s), Nik Kershaw (ditto), Frankie Goes to Hollywood (ditto). But the Whole Loaf is better. And how the world needs it now. LUV U.

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The quintessence of one's continuing love of popular culture that embodies heart-to-heart communication is the subject of this cast. What makes a work of popular art "Christian"? Does it have to be explicit to qualify? Or implicit -- and therefore under the radar -- to really qualify? One thing I know is that you have to love the work-in-question, whether a song, a novel, a movie, or a tv episode, on its own terms before you can communicate your particular personal attraction to its Christian element. (Seriously, I had to love Bride of Frankenstein (1935) for its own imaginative sake before I could go after -- and preach on -- the Christ-empathy in the sufferings of Boris Karloff. Similarly, I had to treasure the total coolness of the original "Outer Limits" (1963) before I could take advantage of the explicit sacrificial Christianity in its episode entitled 'Feasibility Study'. In this cast I survey some powerful episodes of "The New Outer Limits" (1995-99) as a sort-of exercise in Gospel interpretation, at least in the way I've tried to do it over the years. But again, remember: You have to like it first -- it has to connect with you heart-to-heart -- before you can theologize about it. Then, however, once it has won a place within your chest, it is ready for the pulpit. Or the breakfast table. LUV U.

Verticality is a make-or-break attribute of the Christian Church. When we put horizontality before verticality, we run out of gas. Always. People cannot "keep up" horizontal good works and outreach if they are not being, as the English say, resourced. I saw this vividly last week. A men's prayer breakfast and Bible study was powerfully taught by a local pastor. He talked directly and winsomely about various problems with which the men present are dealing, in one form or another. I suddenly found myself taking notes. Hadn't intended to take notes, and even the notes themselves were not directly related to the actual content of his message. But I was being exposed. I was a being who found himself in the direct presence of God. When horizontality and even excellent words like "community" and "outreach" become privileged in the church, then the cart can easily overtake the horse. One saw this years ago in Westchester County. A woman from down the Hudson started to attend our parish in Scarborough. I asked her why she was willing to make the long trip from her house on Sunday mornings. She said that her Presbyterian home church had completely exhausted her with its endless calls for volunteers in the community. Then something really happened: her commuting husband threw himself in front of a train one day, and she was instantly widowed. In that moment, and in its aftermath, all the horizontality in the world didn't speak. She needed God. Today's cast ends with one of the great classics of exterior help in the face of interior need. It is probably enough in itself to make you fall down on your knees. LUV U.

It just came down to me. Like the letter at the beginning of Forrest Gump. Like the chap who rescued Mary and me six years ago when we blew a tire in the most remote "track" to be found in all of England. It just came down to me: I realized that the rockabilly-surfing band Los Straitjackets had something to teach me that had been camouflaged for years. FYI Los Straitjackets are a Nashville-based instrumental rock band that specialize in somewhat weird yet most accomplished covers of mostly ancient rock 'n roll hits from the USA and Mexico. Songs like "Itsy Bitsy Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", "Telstar", "Perfidia" and basically anything by Duane Eddy. The band has changed personnel some over the years, but not too much. Dave Zahl and I got to see them live in 2015. But quite seriously, Los Straitjackets specialize in a structure or form of most of their songs that majors on the last third of what they play. It's odd. They play two verses of a somewhat conventional sounding dinosaur hit from the surfing/sci fi/rockabilly past; but then, in the third verse, the band goes crazy. Another way of saying it might be this: the band ascends near the end to St. Paul's seventh heaven -- or at least something like that. You'll hear it. Always wait for the third verse. It's never ever over 'til it's over. This cast is heavy on the music. To me their sound is in a class by itself. To me it gives hope for... the last third of life. To me it's an actual musical exposition of my Handbook for Boomers (Mockingbird 2020). "Go now, therefore, and make all men... disciples of Los ..." LUV U.

Gerry Rafferty's 1978 single entitled "Right Down the Line" is a pure classic on the experience of imputation. Imputation, for the record, is when someone lovingly regards you as different from the way you perceive yourself; and somehow in being thus regarded, you actually become the person someone sees you as. That's a lot of prepositions, but that's what imputation is. It's like when the frog, having been kissed by the beautiful princess, becomes, in the twinkling of an eye, a prince. Or when the Beast, having been embraced by Beauty, turns into a shining knight. Or it's like when you, at a low directionless point in your love, met a girl who loved you as if you were fine, self-confident and purposeful. And what happened then? To your own surprise, let alone that of everyone else, you became... fine, self-confident and purposeful. It's like Magic. It is Magic, God's magic. This cast reflects on "The Power of Love" (Huey Lewis & the News, 1985), and specifically the mind-blowing power of imputing love to create (unlooked-for) change. It's been done to me, and I'll bet it's been done to you. LUV U.

That title song is a quiet masterpiece. Sure, it's a little corny in the arrangement, but the message is universal. It never fails, at least in my case, to elicit tears -- of recognition. This cast is a hymn to life-long marriage. (That's just what it is.) It is also my attempt to say better what I almost always tried to convey to engaged couples in pre-marital counselling, especially at the start of the second session of the three we would have. I would highlight the importance of a shared spiritual life. I realize that could sound a little preachy, and one tended to soften it some over the years, especially when the couples who would come were less "churched" and more secular in experience. But that doesn't mean I stopped believing it. ("Don't Stop Believin' -- but hey!...) What you observe empirically, both in others and typically in yourselves, is that the closer you feel to God, as a married couple, the closer you feel to each other. Moreover, a shared vertical commitment offers decisive help to your relationship when the storms start coming and the losses begin to add up. Bottom Line: Praise the One who brought you together in the first place, and please don't lose touch with him. (If you do, go to a conference at Tullian's church in Jupiter -- he's got the Answer to lostness.) Read the Bible together, and, well, you'll be looking in the same direction. LUV U (both).

Good things, true things, lasting things have built-in repetition. They repeat in life because they are always valid. So they come back. Like "The Monster Swim"! That major contribution was the follow-up, by the same artist/s, to "The Monster Mash". We all know about the latter. It was the Best Song of 1964, hands down. Recently, an appearance to me several years ago of the soul of my oldest friend, who had died, had a sequel. The soul of another, more recently departed friend appeared to me the night he died, far away and alone. I didn't even know he was dead. Only three days later did I get the news. But he actually came to me the night he died. I write in earnest. The supernatural is real. It is not the only means of navigating our lost and fallen world. But it is true nevertheless, at least in my opinion. When we die, our souls go somewhere. Loose ends need to be tied up; explanations, offered; assurances, given. I know this for sure now. It's also made me go back to Booth Tarkington. Anyone remember an essay in Mockingbird at the Movies (2015) concerning "The Magnificent Ambersons". That celebrated Orson Welles follow-up film to "Citizen Kane" is marked by an ending that omits entirely the most important thing about the novel. In the novel -- not the movie -- the main character is directly confronted by the soul of a woman who has died. That really happens. Tarkington describes it as empirical fact, not psychological fantasy. And all the good of his novel's beautiful resolution hinges on this "para-normal" encounter. I believe in such encounters, tho' only because they have happened to me. Not every day. But twice. And that's enough. LUV U.

There is so little one knows. Here one thought one had a "deep bench" when it comes to foreign films, and yet I knew nothing of Julien Duvivier! Yes, there is his 'classic' Poil de Carotte, and Criterion put out Pepe le Moko a while back. And they are both outstanding. But it took an almost accidental viewing recently of Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy -- for he had a Hollywood phase -- followed by his all-star (sort of) epic Tales of Manhattan, to put it through my head that his was a distinctly Christian view of reality. Then Lo and Behold! Turns out all of Duvivier's films from the 1920s have just been packaged to BluRay. So Mary and I sit down to watch them -- and, well, the tears roll, because three of them are Christ-centered epics of the highest quality, visually, theatrically, and emotionally. Where have I been all these years? The answer is: nowhere near as close to full truth as you thought. How did these remarkable Gospel movies escape you, Paul? You know so much less than you thought you did. Part of it is the critics. The critics one grew up with -- from the New Yorker to the Village Voice to the NY Times: well, they were almost all secular. Or, if they had Christian belief, they tried to hide it. Maybe they would tout a movie for being "humanist" -- which for JAZ and me is shorthand for "probably Christian" but SHHHH. The specifically Christian content needs to be hushed up, or just ignored. That is true again and again in the history of movie criticism. Anyway, Duvivier shatters the narrative. And not just in the '20s, but in the '30s -- when he produced and directed Golgotha -- and the '40s -- when he made Tales of Manhattan -- and then again in the '50s, when he directed the 'Don Camillo' movies, which are milestones of Christian encomium, albeit painted with humor. Now seriously, "Can't You Hear the Beating of my Heart?" LUV U.

Promising Female Prodigy Sarah Diaz Sarah Diaz, a 19-year-old singer/songwriter from Lafayette, Louisiana, is ecstatic as she embarks on her new adventure as an aspiring female pop star with nothing but big aspirations and incredible musical abilities to back her up. She wants her music to reflect the kind and fearless attitude of the young woman who is more than ready to take on the world. Sarah Diaz has started on the right foot with what is one of the most original and passion-full tracks I've listened to in quite a while; and let's face it, with millions of new music getting released every day, my playlist is always work in progress and it is a tough ask to filter through humongous chunks of new music so as to find the right fit for your tastes- I'm just glad that there will be a new addition into my playlist in the form of Sarah Diaz's “2 Luv U” because it made an impression on me to qualify as a straight favorite! 2 Luv U Sarah Diaz EWhile you can accuse Sarah Diaz of many things, of lack of passion, grit, and spirit is not something you can! Diaz unleashes an admirable energetic and ingratiating singing throughout “2 Luv U.” She has a very unique voice that is easy to identify her with and she definitely possesses that artist-like sense of phrasing that highlights her songwriting proficiency. There are a lot of things that can make you fall in love with a song and I found a variety in “2 Luv U”; the melodies are undeniably abundant and they don't let you guess which turn they may make next, you are taken through an oasis of modern pop-flavored instrumentation with cinematic features and futuristic vibe as Sarah Diaz makes her presence felt over the instrumentations via her own polished and euphonious vocals. The marriage between her harmonious and emotion drenched vocals and the melodious beats create an addicting and quite frankly unforgettable sound that will remain ingrained in your head even after the tune is no more. The tune also carries a deeply meaningful theme at its core about getting caught up in a toxic relationship where you really can't stay but still can't let go; — it is like you are caught in this endless loop within yourself. Most of us have actually been caught within yourself. Most of us have actually been caught up in this situation where it literally kills you to love someone else and that is why this track is likely to resonate deeply with you! For a start, this is absolutely commendable and I can only see nothing but a bright future for Sarah Diaz as far as her music career is concerned. I am looking forward to hearing more from her because she has already ignited a spark of likeability from within me which I'll need to nourish every now and then! Follow the attached link so as to listen to her debut single and tell us what you think!

This is a follow-up to "Joe Meek Is God", and observes the non sequiturs of one's life. I believe they are Providential, those decisive non sequiturs; and are best observed in the absence of a "narrative" or personal story-line. What has happened in your life has happened. The turning points, the "pivots", both for 'good' and for 'ill', were not rationally conceived -- or at least few of them were. They came upon you. Just look! Be a scientist for a minute. Study the data of your actual experience. It's all a bit of a mystery in terms of the whys and the wherefores. Yet over time a kind of odd observed plan -- not your plan, but God's Plan -- becomes apparent. As Dr. Tom Calhoun says with Doric profundity: "It had to be that way". My call on the listener to this cast is this: Study the way your life's actually been. You'll very possibly see a larger Purpose, albeit caused by non sequiturs. Your entire life, within stops and starts, under extrusions and intrusions, had an individual direction that added up to a supernatural Non Sequitur Who is God. I hope you like the concluding track, too. It is entitled "Tom Tom Cat" as performed by The Tom Cats, i.e., one of Joe Meek's "bands" in 1961. "Tom Tom Cat" out-Los Straitjackets Los Straitjackets -- which is Saying Something. "Tom Tom Cat" is an inspired non sequitur. Like you and me. LUV U. This cast is dedicated to Ryan Alvey.

Another set full of past and present hits

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People conceal so much about themselves. They don't always mean to, but in one area or another they are afraid to say what's really going on -- especially inside themselves. Then, over time, they -- we! -- become habituated to not ever saying what they/we are really thinking. Listening to the Michel-Legrand-like title theme for the 1967 spy thriller _Billion Dollar Brain _put me in mind of so much. Its urgent, lyrical theme made me want to talk somehow. I don't know what sort of music does that for you, but I'll bet you there's something that does.  From this stirring "signature" piece at the start of the cast, I talk about four different kinds of conversations that go on in people as we go about our day -- from the weather or the traffic, to concrete circumstances and concerns, to internal emotional stresses and anxieties that govern those concerns, to the innermost drives of being and surviving as a human being. Which leads me to Carl Jung and his enduring if humbling insights concerning why men and women "do the things they/we do" (Temptations, 1964). I hope you will identify, at least a little. The episode closes with another "signature" piece: Los Straitjackets' rendition of the 'Linus and Lucy' theme from Vince Guaraldi's "Peanuts" soundtrack. (With Los Straitjackets, always wait until the last third of the track. That's when it goes through the roof.) LUV U, and Merry Christmas 2022.  

What do our favorite songs, movies, and shows -- and even places -- say about us? Why do we like the media we do? What draws us to one form of art rather than another -- to one sort of setting rather than another? Why R.E.O. Speedwagon, for some strange reason, rather than Dylan? Why "Next Plane to London" rather than "A Day in the Life"? Whatever the draw is, I think it has more to do with us than with the thing. Or rather, the object or medium that catalyzes one's deep feelings is less important than the feelings being catalyzed. This cast starts with a reflection I first encountered through Mockingbird. It is from Frederick Buechner (R.i.P.). The cast then careens into George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead -- to which I dragged poor Mary back in '73 when we were courting. (That particular date was almost as much a disaster as when my friend Lloyd and I dragged her to see Jean-Luc Godard's Wind from the East in 1970.) But George Romero's Damascus-Road experience in terms of his future direction in life and art turns out to have been... Tales of Hoffmann. I mean... Then Jerry Garcia gets a hearing, with his Damascus-Road experience. Time and again, and I believe you can see it in your own life, the thing that moved you was accidental. You, however, and your vulnerability were not. Try to focus on the latter, not the former. We close with an immortal and illustrative song by Jimmy Webb, as performed by Johnny Rivers. Please hear it through to the very last line. LUV U.

HI!!!! Sorry I'm late this week

The Gospel of God's One-Way Love can find an appealing, commodious platform within the Anglican tradition. This is because when that tradition is allowed to be fully itself -- historically, theologically, and even aesthetically -- it supports the Good News and pastorally embodies it. On the other hand, like any ancient tradition, 'Anglicanism' can become dry and even choking. When the tradition becomes an end rather than a means to an end -- a "thing" rather than a fountain -- then it can desiccate the very soil on which it was first planted. In this cast I tell something of my own Anglican story, which goes back to 1960. There is within it some of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- and when it comes to the Church of England, mostly the Good. If you're an Episcopalian, I hope you'll be encouraged. Mary's and my story within the Church is also quite funny (at least to me). Hope you'll laugh along. Incidentally, the opening music is the very first song my suite-mates played for me when I arrived at a C. of E. theological college in September 1973. It was counter-intuitive, to say the least. LUV U! P.S. The second song they played was... "China Grove" by the Doobie Brothers. (That one I knew.)

The vehement secularism all around us is no secret. I have seen its pointed perseverance in at least three settings recently, and most powerfully at my 50th Harvard College class reunion. In all three settings, 'God' was sedulously left out of the discourse, and, it felt to me, conscientiously. Nothing new in that, to be sure; but it made me reflect on the Christian Church, at least in its traditional manifestation, and what is it that "triggers" the sharp antagonism. But I came up with a slightly different answer. Had recently read John Weaver's book Evangelicals and the Arts in Fiction from McFarland Books, that wonderful publishing house which specializes in sincerest monographs on subjects such as the history of wax-museum horror films or 1940s Mummy movies. Weaver's book is counter-intuitive in the extreme, and contributes an insight that I have read nowhere else. So maybe we can learn from contemporary secularism, albeit from a different direction. The cast concludes with one of the most unusual Christian pop songs ever recorded, and filmed, from Peter Watkins' 1967 "anti-Establishment" movie Privilege, starring Paul Jones, the lead singer of Manfred Mann (i.e., "Doo Wah Diddy"). In brief, you can learn something about yourself by studying what others dislike about you. LUV U.

"You may say I'm a dreamer... But I'm not the only one... I hope some day you'll join us... And the world will be as one..." 10 mil a que John Lennon estaba pensando en los simpáticos haters, cuando hizo esa canción..TE QUEDASTE CON GANAS DE MAS:https://podimo.com/latam/yiyoychoche